Lenovo ThinkCentre Towers Feature Thin and Thoughtful Designs

Lenovo engineers "sweated the small stuff" on the new M70e and A70 ThinkCentre towers, slimming their facades, increasing ergonomic efficiency and shaving power use by 15 percent.

Lenovo is launching two new ThinkCentre towers, the enterprise entry-level
M70e and an A70 for "growing businesses looking for a boost in processing,
memory and graphics," the company said in a blog post.
With both PC towers, Lenovo reportedly, against popular convention, sweated
the small stuff, taking into account the ways that enterprise users interact
with their PCs, and how not just inches and pounds but millimeters and
fractions could be shaved from the design, according to the Aug. 3 blog post.

"We grouped together frequently accessed controls near the top of the
PC where they are easy to reach, whether the PC is placed on the floor, on a
desk, or in computer furniture," M70 designer John Swansey shared on the
blog. "The indicator lights and power button are on a panel angled toward
the [user], and the power button is shielded from accidental use by an elegant
chrome ring. USB and audio ports are placed
conveniently next to the DVD drive at the
top of the machine where they are visible and accessible. The red-striped DVD
drive eject button, borrowed from our ThinkPad heritage, is easily noticeable."

Lenovo designers also used a smaller motherboard and rearranged internal
components to together save 14mm from the width of the M70e, making it 20
percent smaller than previous ThinCentre desktop models. The chassis was
reportedly thinned, to lighten it on the scale, and improved thermodynamics are
said to offer improved heat dissipation and lowered power consumption.
"To do this, we redesigned the motherboard and added an extra fan and
side vent," Cory M. Grenier, a product marketing manager for Lenovo's
ThinkCentre M Series, wrote on the blog. "As a result, the M70e runs
almost 10 percent cooler than previous models."
It also uses 15 percent less power than older models and contains 35 percent
post-consumer recycled plastic.

The new ThinkCentres come in small form factor or tower designs. Both offer
Intel Core2Duo, Pentium and Celeron processor options, while the M70e has the
additional option of an Intel Core2Quad. Users can also choose between Nvidia
GeForce FX380 Quadro or Intel integrated GMA X4500 graphics, paired with DDR3
(double-data rate 3) memory of up to 4GB. Hard drive options run up to 500GB on
the A70 and up to 1TB on the M70e, but both models offer Gigabit Ethernet, DVD
burners and ThinkVantage tools for preventing the loss of data.
Now available, the M70e features a starting price of $559, while pricing for
the A70 begins at $379.
Lenovo
was the fourth-ranking worldwide provider of PCs during the second quarter
of 2010, following shipments of 8.3 million units, according to estimates from
research firms Gartner and IDC.

Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.